New Poems
by JD DeHart

 

The Fate of Our Forest Home

 

No more battery to combat

the incessant growth of nature,

encroaching on the old home.

 

At one time, little bare feet

would have patted out the upstart

grass shoots, dun earth defeated

by nothing other than play.

 

But the children went away, and

the adults followed after.  This is

a place of leaving, a testament

to farewells.

 

So, the rickety home with its

slapdash composure will soon be

swallowed by these weeds, disappearing

beneath them, blotted out.

 

People will get it was there to begin

with at all.

 

Imagine, if you will, a bottomless

restauranteur sloppily gorging himself

on buttered shrimp, chin dripping.

The world will likewise consume these

memories.

 

Tendrils will crawl up through

the floor boards, even in darkness,

windows will shatter mysteriously.

 

Hiding foxes?

            Aggressive birds?

            Sentient stones?

 

Home loses to time and change,

shaking away the muffled voices,

the susurrus of somebody else’s

forest-burdened childhood.

 

 

 

 

Herd Instinct

 

Hectic, they hurry across the

landscape, onward to another oasis.

This place is littered with blinking

signs and liquidation sales.

 

Pining for sustenance.  The distant

rumbles of some invisible predator

urge them on.  The food court has

been closed for a while now.

 

The predator is only in their minds.

There is no bear waiting to snatch them.

Soon, their shopping

will be done, but never really done.

 

Hard-scrabble, they wear the signs

of their journey, plastic bags hang on

their arms, shiny stones gathered

from the river bed of commerce wink.

 

A hiccup in the journey – the baby

is getting sleepy.  They do not have a list,

but imagine that there are more wares

to collect in the yawning storefronts.

 

Another day.

 

 

 

A Night for Neighbors

 

A slicing conflagration

that brings purity, or else a way

of filling the night air with smoke.

Later, ebony marks up the wall.

 

We arrange ourselves like careful

patrons on the lawn, watching the

spread of flames.  Someone should

call, if no one has.

 

Someone did.  Darkness is dressed

in rapid surges of blaring light,

siren sound.

 

Anchored in our restless search

for the next best program to fill our eyes

with, the shouts from outside woke

in us a primitive sensibility.

 

All of a sudden, we realized we

still had neighbors.  More than

just faceless voids who echo

hello and how-are-you emptily.

 

It was awkward, like realizing someone

else had been in the same room

for years, never really noticed.

Hi there, you in the corner.  What’s

your name?

 

Or someone had been trying to get

our attention for nearly a decade,

and we had only lolled our heads

in the air.

Oh, my.  Were you there all this time?

 

Suddenly, we were one.  Or at least

pretending to feel that way until

the lights were gone and we returned

to our channel flipping routine.

 

 

 

The Whale in the Sky

 

 

To live in a world where

the pale pearl of a cloud might

be filled with the shadow presence

of a whale,

 

swimming through the sky,

rising and falling in massive

flight, spouting cumulus from a cavern

mounted on its considerable frame,

 

and meanwhile, on the earth below,

only beautiful animals, no more slithering

creatures tapered at one end and filed

like knives on the other tip,

 

ready to cut us down, undulating

threats moving with soiled gleam.

 

 

 

On the Stalk

 

Silent orb resting

on a gum-pink quivering

base, waving side to side

 

like the arms of a crazed

fan during the World Series.

 

This appendage brings

to mind questions of how we

come to know the universe.

 

The sweeping finger, the lapping

dog tongue, the perusing

eye that travels a library?

 

Fragments of truth studded with

the remnants of perception?

 

Still yet is the question

of what we sense and its collision

with what really is.

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